How the Kingdom of Atlantia Trains for War Outline for lecture at War College in Swordcliff (March 2002)
by Countess Sir Fern de la Foret (Laurie Erickson)

MENTAL PREPARATION

Sometime in the past, long before I moved to Atlantia, the Kingdom of Atlantia made a decision to become proficient in War combat. Such a decision required sacrifice and hard work, and everybody realized that. But they figured that the benefits to the Kingdom would be worth the trouble. I presume that this project was initiated by the knights and other dedicated fighters in the distant past, but I guarantee that it is now accepted by all the leaders of the kingdom.

New royalty, new knights, new baronies, new fighters, all receive the same message from the old people: building a good army is A Good Thing for the kingdom.

Because all the leaders agree with this basic message, there is a strong incentive to work together to support the army. In Atlantia, this appeal for The Good of the Kingdom has absolutely fantastic results. All the royalty, all the chivalry, all the marshalls, all the baronies and local groups, and all the households cooperate at war practices. Even leaders who don't like each other are capable of working together to train the troops.

ADVANTAGES of building a good army: good esprit de corps, good morale. Teamwork builds friendships, with shared hardships and shared successes. Easy to integrate new- comers-join the fighting team and you are already a part of a successful melee team. Because the Royalty, the Chivalry and the Marshallate do most of the teaching. Each and every fighter in Atlantia has the opportunity to practice face-to-face with all of the fighting leaders. Each fighter developes a personal knowledge of the king, the prince, the Earl Marshall, and a bunch of the active chivalry. This builds a huge base of loyalty and support.

DISADVANTAGES: hard work, boring drills and training, no personal glory. All your success belongs to the team, not to yourself. Hard work involves travel for training and practice. The Royalty, the Chivalry and the Marshallate are expected to do most of the traveling and the teaching. They make the sacrifices to travel to each regional practice (2-8 hrs travel) in order train the army. Also, it is the chivalry who volunteer to be practice dummies when needed. They are not doing the fun stuff at these practices, either, and it's easy for the other fighters to see that the chivalry are working just as hard as every other fighter.

How much work does this take? Atlantia practices year-round melee training.

Atlantian habits: one War Maneuvers event attended by King and Prince, Earl Marshall, Warlord (sometimes there's a warlord, sometimes not), most of the knights, total 80-100 fighters. (Kingdom contained about 500 fighters when I was there.)

ALSO, 3-4 Regional practices each spring (outdoor events possible in Feb-May), organized by either King or Prince (why have a regional practice at all if the War Royalty isn't going to attend?) and a good bunch of Chivalry. 25-50 fighters.

ALSO, monthly scheduled baronial practices, 10-30 fighters, depending on the barony.

The rest of this essay is about what happens at a war practice.

This is the kind of introductory speech that the high-ranking person gives at each war practice:

PHYSICAL TRAINING, DRILLS AND SCENARIOS

Very important to have a training leader(s), someone who is NOT swinging a sword, but instead is watching the teams and giving corrections and instruction. There must be someone in charge who can tell whether things are working well, when water breaks are needed, when to move on to the next drill. This person is not getting to have the usual kind of fighting fun-he doesn't get to play with the team. He's doing work. It's best to have the most experienced melee fighter doing this. The best melee fighter, after all, probably doesn't need to be learning the same stuff as the beginners.

Not necessary to fight all scenarios to victory. When the purpose of the training is achieved (everyone has a turn, the whole team does it right the first time, etc.), stop the fighting-for- fun and move on to the next training exercise. Explain to the fighters that because they did so well in this drill, we can move forward to the next drill. Many times the important training is how to make first contact with the enemy. If so, you need to practice only the first contact, not the subsequent swordblows. Don't waste your melee time practicing single combat.

Examples of group training.

Marching drill. Forward, wheeling, running to cover ground and reforming, re-grouping after disorganization, charging (3 step charge). Use entire group.

Rally melee. Begin with everyone in a circle. You must join up with your assigned triad before you can attack anybody else. Last team alive wins.

3 vs 1. Kill the great-weapon drill. Each triad (in Atlantia, they called them triads, groups of 3 fighters. We might call them lances of 3-5 fighters) attacks a single great-weapon fighter (preferably a very good fighter). The triad needs to learn how to run down the great weapon and kill him with teamwork. Fouling the weapon is good strategy here.

3 vs 3. with feed-in. resurrection. As one person dies, another is allowed to run up from the holding pen to join his team. This teaches how to join up with/against a line formation, how to pay attention to a small battle and to devise a strategy.

Large-team scenarios. Divide your troops in half and assign strategies and/or let the team captains come up with their own strategies. The lesson here is that SIMPLE STRATEGIES ARE BEST. Your team cannot remember or accomplish difficult strategies. Let them try out various strategies, but don't waste too much time in discussion.

Use different scenarios with different victory conditions: emphasize that the rules and the victory conditions will affect the strategy. Each fighter must understand the victory condition. Don't get caught up in emotion if you want to help your team win. Be efficient.

Examples of strategy scenarios.

Kill the captain. Each team must decide whether to defend their captain or to attack the other captain, or how to do both. Bad strategy to just let the captain fight like a regular team member.

Capture the flag (one team assigned to defend the flag, the other team to capture it) with a time limit (5 min max unless resurrection.)

Race to the goal/ retrieve the golden apple. Remember that killing all members of the other team is only one of many choices for winning. If you don't remember the victory condition, it is possible that the slowest, quietest fighter can sneak up and be responsible for the win.

Collect the bags of gold with a 5 minute time limit. Each team has "bags of gold" (garbage bags stuffed with newspapers, for example) and must make decisions about defending the original gold, or capturing additional gold. Or begin with the bags scattered on the field and both teams race to collect, capture, or steal them. The strategy changes if you allow people to kick the bags of gold, or if the bags must be carried by hand.

The commander of the troops (King or Prince or Warlord or baron or household leader) should be watching all of the large melees. He needs to observe strategy and recognize the skills and weaknesses of all of his troops. He should NOT be swinging a sword very much! His job is to try out different strategies and watch their success/failure.

Each drill or scenario should be followed by an analysis time. Explain to the fighters how to improve, have each team reveal their strategy so others can recognize it. Review Pennsic rules, especially for new fighters.

Make sure to correct common mistakes! If no mistakes are made, assign someone (typically an experienced fighter) to make mistakes so everybody can see what they look like. Be sure to review attacking from behind, attacking a line formation, face- thrusting, die defensively, and HOW TO HANDLE DISAGREEMENTS. Remember that the practice teams consist of your friends, so use politeness for disagreements. At Pennsic, use ever MORE politeness when you disagree.

LEADERSHIP TRAINING. One good thing about melee training-it teaches leadership at all kinds of levels. Each triad has to have a leader, just so everyone runs forward in the same directions. Leadership doesn't mean bossiness, it just means that someone makes quick decisions. As the teams get bigger, each team has a leader to call the cadence, to call the charge, to keep everyone facing in the same direction.

For leadership training, you have to allow thinking-time and talking-time in each training session. Run the practice drills one full set (so everybody has a turn), then allow a 10 min water break while somebody reviews the lesson and points out the improvements. Be sure to include the good points as well as the weaknesses. The best compliment is "good teamwork".

At the beginning of each scenario, allow a short time (SHORT, like 2 min) for the team to plan strategy. Don't give them much time, because their strategy will get too complicated. Remind the teams that simple strategies are best, and that they will get another chance today to try a different strategy.

Assign different leaders for different scenarios. Give the beginning leaders some instruction in leadership: ANY PLAN IS BETTER THAN NO PLAN is the first rule of melee leadership, followed by SOME PLANS ARE BETTER THAN OTHER PLANS. Remind the teams to stick with the leader, even if he's wrong, because THE TEAM STICKS TOGETHER NO MATTER WHAT. Anyone with a better plan can take his turn being leader another time.

At the end of the practice, the high-ranking person ALWAYS should thank everyone for coming, remind them of the goals of teamwork, tell them that they've made good progress and that he's looking forward to working with them again. Then, if at all possible, allow some play time for single combat, or any other fighting that people want. MAKE SURE TO END ON A POSITIVE NOTE. Even if it was a totally rotten practice, the leader can at least say "This is suppposed to be a learning experience. At least it's much better to make mistakes now, instead of at Pennsic. We'll try again at the next war practice, and I'm confident that we'll do much better. Thanks for coming, guys. I appreciate your effort. Let's go have a drink."